


To The Beat Of Your Drum

by raendown



Series: NaNoWriMo 2020 Drabbles [130]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:08:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21539536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: In a world where you have no heartbeat until you meet your soulmate Tobirama has never minded the silence.
Relationships: Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Madara
Series: NaNoWriMo 2020 Drabbles [130]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533161
Comments: 17
Kudos: 341





	To The Beat Of Your Drum

**Author's Note:**

> Someone sent this in ages ago as an SMC prompt that didn't get chosen by the generator and I am very happy to finally have a chance to fill it.

Tobirama was used to the hollow silence of his chest, found it comforting in a way. When the night was dark and quiet around him he felt almost a part of the shadows himself despite the color of his skin, a perfect statue in the moments he fell still just before the strike.

In all his twelve years he’d never felt broken in any way. Lots of people never found their soulmate so it followed that lots of people never experienced the feeling of a heartbeat. It was a simple fact of life. The world was big; the odds of running in to that one perfect match for your own soul were quite low and lowering every year as the populations grew. So no, Tobirama did not feel broken. He did not feel as though he were missing any part of life that should have been his due. And he did not expect to feel that way even if he lived to the ripe old age of thirty without ever feeling movement in his chest. The silence was expected, after all.

When he met Uchiha Madara for the first time, however, he was hardly disappointed. A little scared, if truth be told. The only Uchiha he’d ever met had been on the battlefield and the first thing that registered about this new face was the uchiwa stitched in to the collar just below it. The second thing that registered was the almost painful thudding sensation behind his ribs.

“You…” The boy looked older than him, a little taller and his muscles just a bit more developed. He clearly seemed to recognize Tobirama yet instead of attacking he simply lifted a hand and placed it over his chest.

“Me.” Finding himself at a disadvantage, his own identity known before he could identify his opponent, Tobirama fell back on his natural sass to see him through.

“I…you can feel that too, right?”

Lifting an eyebrow, Tobirama allowed himself a brief pause to try and decode that. He wasn’t actually sure what the other boy was talking about. Instead of attacking he was asking weird questions and so far that was different from all other encounters with every enemy Tobirama had ever faced. Some of them begged for their life or tried to bargain with him sometimes but none of them had ever stopped to chat before. It was possible this boy had something wrong with him.

Though it was also possible that he was wounded considering the way he had a hand pressed so tightly against his chest. It made Tobirama uncomfortably aware of the strange thunderous sensation inside his own chest, something he would really rather wait to figure out until he wasn’t facing an unknown enemy.

“Can’t you feel it?” the boy asked again when he apparently took too long answering. “Your heartbeat?”

“M-my what?”

“Heartbeat! As soon as I saw you I felt it. It’s amazing.” He stepped forward but it wasn’t a threatening movement. In fact he almost seemed to be smiling. “My name is Madara. What’s yours?”

So the boy didn’t know him after all, not in the way he’d thought anyway. Tobirama swallowed against a sudden lump in his throat and tried to process what this meant. If the new sensation of a drum inside his chest was actually a heartbeat then that would make them soulmates. His soulmate was an Uchiha. He stared at the boy Madara, a name he recognized all too well even if until now he’d never had a face to match it with, and realized that he had a decision to make.

It was an easy decision. For once, just once in his life, he wanted to be selfish.

“My name is Tobirama,” he murmured. “It’s nice to meet you.”

And so they began.


End file.
